Communication - Report Example

Communication Newspapers can be considered the most significant development that has incited the birth of a requisite liaison between the publicdomain and individuals. With the establishment of William Caxton’s printing press in 1470s, the dissemination of knowledge and entertainment through books became a reality and the number of people who benefited from books increased considerably. Newspapers have in fact developed in the Middle Ages in Europe, along with the postal system served as a clearing house of information which facilitated the publishing of one-ff news sheets and weeklies. The public interest in newspapers can be seen varying through ages, depending on varying effects of industrial revolution, colonialism, liberation, political democracy and capitalism. The colonial newspapers in America had been designed to cater to the needs of Englishmen who were waiting for news from their homeland. These were carried with the help of the postal service and the postmaster, who was a royal servant, collected and printed the news. Local news had not been an area of interest for the colonial settlers, and was even looked at with suspicion, as it had the power to spread resentment among the colonized. As Patricia Law Hatcher observes, “Printing presses, which we take for granted as mechanical devices, were considered by the crown to be dangerous. The early colonists probably considered them irrelevant to their primary purpose of survival in a new world” (Hatcher). The Stamp Act decreed in 1765 by the Crown tried to bring down the newspaper industry of America to the basic reporting of events, observed by the crown, and restricted in circulation by levying tax on advertisements and enforcing the rule that all newspapers were to be published in stamp papers. However, the strong protest against this decree led to the first significant rebellious movement among newspapers which was able to remove the decree. American independence resulted in the ‘partisan press’, owned by political partied. As it can be assumed, partisan press brought forth newspapers that contained news items created and interpreted for the benefit of specific parties. Since they were financed solely by the political parties, it was mandatory that they showed allegiance to their principles. The emergence of ‘penny press’ that relied on advertisements for its revenue is the aftermath of American capitalism. The first penny press newspaper was The New York Sun, published by Benjamin Day in 1833. Penny press had in fact decentralized the nature of news and liberated newspapers from the clasp of a specific political ideology. John B.Thompson approves the argument that “the struggle for an independent press, capable of reporting and commenting on events with a minimum of state interference and control, played a key role in the development of the modern constitutional state” (Thompson). However, penny press owes it existence to its popularity among the masses, and can survive only through a profit based news generation. This caused a major shift in ideological realm of news collection and dissemination, as more and more human interest stories and news that sell entered the scenario. The American news agency, Associated Press (AP) was formed in May 1846 and continues to exert an unavoidable influence on American news media. It has survived challenges from United Press International which has collapsed later, and rises up to the demands that are raised by other famous international news agencies like Reuters and Agence France Presse. Economy of words and fidelity to facts make AP a renowned and reliable news agency even today. Investigative journalism and expose’ of hushed up incidents have started to fill the newspapers as the newspapers were in the constant race of increasing their readership. Nellie Bly, impersonating a mental patient did the unforgettable feat of the Blackwell Island’s lunatic asylum expose’. She raked numerous controversies regarding this, as her operation involved fooling a number of psychiatrists and institutions by feigning madness and getting diagnosed as a person who needed to be admitted in lunatic asylum. This questioned the credibility of the existing psychiatric treatments and the reports from the asylum exposed the inhuman treatment of the inmates there. I.F. Stone, the famous investigative journalist is known for his constant efforts, through news weeklies and newspapers, to contest the dominant powers that ruled through the Second World War and afterwards. He has also made his presence felt in analyzing and critiquing the American side of the cold war years and the Vietnam War. The amount of carefully documented work that he has left behind has provided a treasure house of opportunities for researchers who investigated the significant events and the complex power relations retrospectively. The competition in the newspaper industry focused on increased readership and this has in some ways led to the development of ‘yellow journalism’ with its overindulgence in sensationalism, scandal-mongering and jingoism. Many brilliant journalists have also been part of yellow journalism, though their contribution to the news media cannot be discounted just because of this. Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst are considered the major figures behind the origin of yellow journalism. However, their differing political allegiances and later break up have taken them into separate areas of interest. Pulitzer’s New York World and its rival, Hearst’s New York Journal sparked many controversies and contributed immensely to the propagation of yellow journalism. There had also been a lot of social movements related to newspapers, and one name that stands out among the attempts of socially committed journalists is Dorothy Day. She has used the power of news media to lead numerous social justice campaigns for the poor, desolate, disempowered people. The Catholic Worker Movement that she started published the Catholic Worker Newspaper. Though the Movement and the newspaper were embraced by the Catholics, Dorothy Day has paved the way for social interference through the news media, and proved the good effect of it from the 1930s through the 1960s. The minority revolutions and countercultural discourses of the 1960 made use of the Underground Press which is also known as alternative print media, published and distributed independently for specific causes. Underground Press had originally been used by the Dutch in the 1940s during the Nazi occupations. There existed various kinds of Underground Press in Europe America and Australia, depending on political and socio-cultural emergencies. Quite often, the left political periodicals are clubbed together with the Underground Press. Depending on the social, religious and cultural needs of the reading public, many ethnic newspapers have also emerged in the past century. They often address the issues related to ethnic minorities and their empowerment. Their publication and distribution are also done independently. The scope of Underground Press and Ethnic Media are restricted, just as in the case of Partisan Press. The observation by Habermas (1962) that newspapers were responsible for shaping the “public sphere” can be proven true if one observes the way the news media has influenced and changed the expectations and aspirations of the reading public. However, as can be observed from a historical survey of the emergence and growth of news media, the way in which the public sphere has shaped and developed the news media is also equally important. News media is in fact a cultural construct, even as it holds the responsibility and potential for shaping the public sphere. References Hatcher, Patricia Law. “Colonial Communication – Newspapers, Broadsides, and the Post” May 18, 2007 Thompson, John. B. “The Trade in News” in The Media and Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. , 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. May 18, 2007. Read More